Fished around SW Montana three weeks ago and just got around to giving a belated report. We had great weather and good water conditions.

23.5" brown on the Big Hole River


Big Sheep creek where we were planning to fish with John Scott but he needed to finalize selling his house in ID. Thanks John, for the info on Big Sheep, it was really windy but the fishing was great that day.


Nice brown about 15" from Grasshopper creek. Access was difficult but we found a way to the stream and it paid off. Tested out the Montana stream access law, but the locals drove us out (a herd of cattle surrounded us both on the banks and in the stream, just stared at us until we got tired of it and went upstream past another barb wire across the stream). Worked out Ok the fishing was better where the cattle weren't walking through and muddying the water.


One of the better brookies from the upper Big Hole. Asked permission to park on a ranch and fished on their property. Brookies were podded up prior to spawning so a couple of holes had a hundred or more fish in them. It actually got silly casting in there because you were going to catch one every cast.

We were on three float trips in 9 days of fishing and on our own the other 6. We did just as well on our own as far as numbers of fish but the sizes were a little smaller on average. We fished a number of streams that were new to us and had good success on all of them.

We did catch quite a few 16" to 18" browns and rainbows on two of the float trips, but we caught a lot of 12" to 16" fish on our own. The big brown was on a float trip.

All the fish caught on our own were on dries, #14 Renegades, a #12 drake pattern from Michigan, #24 tricos and #4 hoppers. We don't fish subsurface much on our own. The float trip fish were pretty evenly split between hoppers and drakes on top and prince nymphs and wooly buggers as droppers.

This was our fifth year in SW Montana but our first time in late summer. Hope to get back there in late summer next year.